My girlfriend is a Miao demon.

The mighty Sisyphus and the enormous stone ball, the giant's roar and his momentary surge of energy afterward, always make people forget who the true master of fate is.

Xiang Nanfeng's hand finally landed firmly on the cold, damp, and sticky bronze door.

He had no choice; they were all soaked to the bone. Their damp clothes felt like heavy ice packs against their skin, rapidly draining their body heat and severely restricting their movement. Gui Luyao, in particular, was pale and her lips were purple. Compared to the journey home tomorrow morning, she clearly needed a campfire more than anything else. But in this open area spanning a kilometer, they had walked twice without ever stepping on a single branch or a clump of dry grass.

In this vast, deep mountain, why is there a barren land where not a blade of grass grows? Compared to the unknown fear inside the strange building, shouldn't the strangeness of this open space be even more chilling?

Pushing the bronze door against the south wind, he found it far more imposing than he had imagined. The hinges, nearly rusted, emitted a series of chilling screams as they were twisted by the force.

Xiang Nanfeng heard one of the cries coming from at least two meters above his head, from the top hinge of the bronze door. This meant that the building he was about to enter had a door at least four meters high.

What kind of building is this, and why does it have such a tall and heavy bronze door?

Above the bronze gate, Xiang Nanfeng could even imagine a gigantic black beast crouching in front of them behind the mist, staring intently at the two people at their feet, swallowing its greedy saliva.

At that moment, his heart pounded in his throat, and he forced his eyes wide open, as if that would give him the courage to meet the gaze. But what he saw through the open bronze doors wasn't a giant beast, but a million pairs of eyes. They were all fixed on the two intruders as they took their first step into the castle.

"Is this an old castle?"

As I entered the castle, the thick fog seemed to thin considerably. Those unseen eyes that had been staring at me, those ten thousand shrieking arrows hidden in the devil's gaze, seemed to fall silent instantly. It truly resembled a castle, or at the very least, a European-style building.

Upon entering, one is greeted by a vast, open-air hall. The walls inside the hall are quite peculiar, covered with irregular protrusions and recesses, resembling a climbing wall in a climbing gym. These structures are clearly not the result of years of neglect and damage, but rather intentional features from the very beginning of the construction.

"There's nothing to be afraid of, it's just too damp. Luyao, look, this is an ancient castle, though maybe it's not an ancient castle, just an abandoned tourist attraction."

The heavy bronze door was pushed open by the south wind, opening a narrow gap of about thirty degrees. The two walked in one after the other through the gap, and then slowly moved inward along the inner wall of the castle.

As we ventured deeper and the lights converged, the dark walls behind the thin mist were the first to reveal their true form:

It turned out that the seemingly black walls weren't actually black, but rather an extremely deep green—vast, nauseating patches of green moss layered upon layer. To illustrate just how thick the moss was, Xiang Nanfeng casually poked it with his trekking pole; with a "plop," the tip of the pole disappeared completely into the ground, and still wasn't quite there.

Hiking poles are known as the third leg of an outdoor enthusiast, and the tip is like a foot. Xiang Nanfeng went hiking several times with netizens last year, and this titanium-tungsten alloy tip was one he had just ordered and replaced at the beginning of the year. He remembers it clearly; it was a full 8.1 centimeters long. In other words, the moss growing on the interior walls of this building must be at least 9 centimeters thick.

A layer of moss grew, then died. Another layer of moss grew on the decaying corpse of the previous moss, and then died too.

How many layers of moss must have grown, died, and decayed to create this scene? And what was the original appearance of the building's walls, beneath the deepest layer of moss and the earliest layer?

Looking further up, nauseating moss climbs relentlessly, enveloping the entire castle.

At the very top of the castle, opposite the atrium, stands a separate loft. This loft is very tall, at least three or four stories above the ground. On the side of the room facing the atrium, there is an arched opening that looks like an oddly shaped window. However, the wooden frame of this inner window is rotten, warped, and even decayed. Some of the wooden strips have clearly fallen to the floor of the atrium, while two strips still hang in the frame, parasitized by thick moss that grows wildly, pressing down on the strips and creating a drooping, precarious appearance.

"This castle is so strange." Gui Luyao, arm in arm with Xiang Nanfeng, also managed to lift her head and examine the bizarre building they were in. "Doesn't the entire castle have a single window that opens outwards?"

Luyao's discovery is indeed a problem.

The arched window on the roof is clearly an observation window for people in the attic to peek into the hall, but there doesn't seem to be a single window on the exterior wall of the building. Did this building not consider lighting at all?

"Could it be that the windows on the outer wall aren't broken at all, but are covered in moss along with the walls, so we can't see them? Only that one window is broken and empty, so we can see it?"

As Xiang Nanfeng spoke, he pointed to the only arched window upstairs. Their gazes and the light from their headlamps converged on the window. Although the indoor fog had thinned considerably, the headlamp light was still quite weak by that point. It barely penetrated the thin fog, and when it reached the narrow wall, the meager glimmer was almost entirely swallowed by the dark moss.

However, a sharp eye still managed to spot the stark difference in light reflection between an object inside the window and the moss outside.

"Luyao, look, the color in that area seems a little different from the rest?"

"It seems...it seems a little different. What is it?" Gui Luyao said, turning her head slightly to point her headlamp at the unusual spot in the window. After a moment, her arm, which was holding Xiang Nanfeng's left arm, trembled again, and her exclamation was low and high-pitched, "Blood, it's blood?"

On the side of the window, along the edge of the window frame, the dark green moss was covered by another layer of color. That place was no longer a combination of darkness and green, but a mixture of darkness and blood red.

What color is that?

It looked as if dried blood had been soaked by the damp fog and clung tightly to the window frame. Of course, the red and black stuff wasn't blood; upon closer inspection, it was just a piece of curtain that had long since rotted into shreds.

The curtains were originally supposed to be bright red, but because of the damp environment, they stuck to the window frame. The part closer to the outside of the window probably dried faster because it wasn't directly wet, making it stand out conspicuously when hanging outside.

"Nanfeng, I'm scared. Are there ghosts in here? I keep feeling like someone's watching us from that little window upstairs!"

"Stop scaring yourself. You're just seeing threats everywhere."

"No, no, I can't stay here any longer, not even for a second longer! Let's get out, let's go! Let's go!"

As Gui Luyao spoke, she began to retreat recklessly again. Of course, she couldn't just retreat by herself; she also forcefully pulled Xiang Nanfeng towards the door.

The dilapidated, gloomy, and decaying castle evokes trembling, fear, and nausea, but compared to these cowardly psychological feelings, isn't the physical feedback of the cold sweat emanating from every pore of the clothes, trousers, and shoes, the steam that condenses into water in the suffocating fear and hellish darkness, soaking through the clothes and then clinging tightly to the skin, much clearer and more urgent?

Once you're in, there's no going back.

"You can't go out, Luyao, stop being so stubborn!"

This time, Xiang Nanfeng decisively grabbed Gui Luyao's arm and pulled her back.

The struggle between the two nearly drove Luyao to a mental breakdown, but just as she was about to scream, she heard a sharp, strange sound coming from inside the door frame—the sound of fatigued metal tearing and snapping.

"Be careful!"

Xiang Nanfeng pulled Luyao back. Just as he embraced her, the hundreds-of-pounds-heavy bronze door collapsed inwards like a mountain crashing down, slamming into the mud. Instantly, the force of the impact sent mud flying everywhere. Xiang Nanfeng instinctively held onto Gui Luyao, which allowed half of their bodies to escape the flying mud. However, the bronze door was too heavy, and the impact too great; a significant amount of mud still splashed onto their bodies, even their faces.

Gui Luyao was stunned by this sudden life-or-death moment. If it weren't for Xiang Nanfeng pulling her, the rusty bronze door would have crushed them right now.

"It's alright, it's alright, it's just been in disrepair for years!"

At that moment, Gui Luyao was so frightened that she stood frozen in place, gasping for breath, her face ashen. To comfort her, Xiang Nanfeng quickly took out tissues to wipe the mud off her face, but the mud was cold, smelly, and incredibly sticky. The tissues not only failed to clean her properly but actually made her face even more smudged.

At that moment, Gui Luyao finally recovered somewhat from her terrified state. She no longer insisted on leaving the castle, but instead took off her backpack and prepared to rummage for a wet wipe to clean the mud off her face. As she bent down to rummage for something, the beam of her headlamp happened to sweep across the ground, illuminating the strange, scattered lights in the mud beneath her feet.

"Nanfeng, do you see something in the mud? It's flashing?"

"Things? What things?"

"There seems to be a very faint light?"

"Yeah?"

Xiang Nanfeng was a little nervous; he had clearly noticed the unusual thing Luyao had mentioned. He stretched out his arm and stuck his trekking pole into the mud, stirring it left and right, up and down.

"There's something there!"

Sure enough, the tip of the trekking pole struck something, soft and long. Xiang Nanfeng aimed at the object in the mud and thrust it sharply, then pulled it out of the silt.

It's a dead fish!

"Oh my god, there's another one here!"

"Here, here too."

The two men, using their hiking poles, rummaged through the mud at their feet and effortlessly picked out more than a dozen dead fish from the ground. How could there be so many dead fish in the castle?

Mud, dead fish, thick fog?

Could it be that this ancient castle, this open space...

Their living conditions were unbearable, but what was even more perplexing was the state of the fish's deaths. The fish looked as if they had been half-eaten on a dinner table. Some fish only had meat on their heads, with only bones remaining on the back, while others were the opposite, with the meat still on the back but only empty skulls on the front.

What shone amidst the silt were actually fish scales that hadn't yet rotted, and fish eyes. The fish eyes emitted a yellow and green light, a deep and dreamlike glow that seemed not to be reflected from the headlamp's white light, but rather emitted spontaneously, like fireflies.

Could the eyes of these dead fish be a light source, capable of emitting light? Or, like the legendary luminous pearl, are they themselves some kind of special light source?

Inside the castle, in the front hall, the energy released from the collapse of the bronze door caused the building to vibrate. Large patches of moss clinging to the roof were shaken off by this external force, revealing in some areas the original decorative lines and mural patterns of the building.

Those were discontinuous lines and mottled patches of color, which probably depicted a person's hands and legs.

Based on the position of these hands and feet and the proportion of the entire foyer dome, it can be roughly judged that a complete and exquisite painted mural must have been painted on the dome at the beginning of the construction.

The content of the murals is probably very similar to the paintings on the collapsed bronze door, depicting certain mythological or religious stories. Unfortunately, the exquisite murals could not withstand the ravages of time, and even the painter's skill could not overcome the accumulation of moss. Now, all that remains are some severed limbs, hanging in mid-air like corpses, or dancing with the darkness like ghosts.

The exquisite yet horrific remains were an eyesore. Moving the gaze downwards, a massive metal structure, as tall as a person, stood out prominently in the center of the foyer.

At first glance, Xiang Nanfeng thought it was a strange giant cage, but upon closer inspection, he realized that it was indeed the right thing in the wrong place. It was originally a huge bronze chandelier, which should obviously be hanging in the center of the dome, but now, like the bronze door from before, it could not bear the weight due to the oxidation and rust of some of the connecting parts, and finally crashed to the ground at some unknown time.

At that time, the robust and textured main skeleton had broken into three pieces:

Two sections of the chandelier were deeply embedded in the silt, their surfaces covered with a vibrant green patina. Their forms remained bold and powerful, standing in the center of the hall like the bronze Jianmu and Fusang statues of Sanxingdui, radiating a mysterious power akin to a primitive religion from a primordial era, sending chills down one's spine. The other section of the chandelier lay scattered among a pile of decaying wood. This wood had clearly once been a magnificent wooden staircase, but after being struck by the falling chandelier, it collapsed and rotted, ultimately becoming a pile of rotten wood.

Xiang Nanfeng noticed that in the center of the front hall, towards the back, there was actually a staircase hidden behind the thin mist. This staircase went straight up, and its destination was precisely the mysterious attic on the roof with arched windows, red curtains, and a view into the entire front courtyard.

What happened in the attic?

Who is still hiding in the attic?

The only path was the half-collapsed wooden staircase leading to the attic. Xiang Nanfeng glanced in the direction of the staircase, then a sudden idea struck him. He turned to Gui Luyao and said:

"Luyao, I understand, I have a solution! Do you know why there is fog? It's because the ground temperature is lower than the air temperature, and the water vapor in the air condenses and forms fog when it gets close to the ground."

"so what?"

"So the fog height usually doesn't exceed 2 meters. I'm so stupid! Have you ever wondered why the fog inside this house is much thinner than outside? That's because we climbed 7 steps before we entered the house! Those 7 steps are at least 1 meter high."

"Do you...do you want to go upstairs?"

"What else? That attic must be above the fog on the ground. If there are windows on the outside wall inside the attic, we can see the surrounding environment through the windows and find a way out! Even if there are no windows and we can't find a way out for a while, we can make a fire in the attic where there is no fog and it is relatively dry, and dry our clothes first."

"Otherwise, the mud here is wet, the air is humid, even if we have a lighter, even if there's a pile of rotten wood there, how could we possibly light it?"

"No, no, you can't go up there, it's too dangerous. Look at that bronze door, look at that chandelier, everything in this house is completely rotten. What if it can't hold up and you fall? Besides, look at that staircase, it's broken like that, and it's so high up. Even if the upper part could support your weight, how would you get up there? You can't even reach it!"

How will you know if you don't try?

"No, please, I beg you, Xiang Nanfeng! Don't go, please don't go!"

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:47

"And then what happened? You went up there?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:47

"On the contrary, I went down."

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:47

"What do you mean? How did you get down there? Where did you go?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:48

"I don't know. I think it was a burial chamber in an ancient tomb. Luyao... Luyao might have disappeared there."